Pretending to be Media

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, I’ll be going to Dell World 2012 in December, as a guest of Dell. I’ll be there as part of the media pool from Australia as the only blogger.

It looks like social networking is one of the main themes of the event, along with cloud computing and data analytics, so that explains the desire for a blogger. I’m flattered to have been picked, but I can imagine that a bunch of others were ruled out because they work for Dell competitors or partners, and that causes problems for these sorts of things. Also, I’m a Dell customer, and I like their laptops, so I’m a pretty safe choice as well. PR-wise, it makes sense.

But hey, it could just be blind luck, and these things are fun, so yay!

I’m a little bit excited about the keynotes. The opening keynote has ex-President Bill Clinton. He’s a tremendous public speaker, whatever you think of his politics, and I’m looking forward to seeing him live. Not something that happens every day.

They’ve also got Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, doing a keynote. I believe the closing one. I’ve read their book, and several criticisms of their methods. It’s bound to be interesting if nothing else. Superfreakonomics is on my unread book stack, so hopefully I’ll get to it by December.

The Evolving Plan

I’ll be tweeting, as usual, as @jpwarren, the whole time. I’ll do my best to add an appropriate hashtag so you can filter the spammier parts.

I’ll blog when I can fit it in. I plan to do my usual post-mortem analysis über-posts, and I’ll try to do some sort of “while I’m there” posts, too. There’ll also be a leadup post or two if I think of anything interesting to write. Let me know if there’s anything you’d particularly like me to write about.

The Disclosure

Dell are paying for my flights and accommodation (well, most of it, details as they emerge), and entry to the conference. Food is usually catered at these things, and I expect there’ll be events of an evening sponsored by various partners with gear to flog.

Other than that, I’ll let you know what sort of schwag gets thrown my way.